Catriona Olsen has been executive head of King’s InterHigh, an online school with over 6,000 pupils aged 7-19, since July 2023, after two years as head of its senior school.

King’s InterHigh is part of the international group Inspired Education, which educates 90,000 pupils in almost 120 schools across 24 countries.

Olsen, who is based in the West of Ireland but works with teachers around the world, tells us about the challenges and rewards of a typical week working in an online learning environment.

Supporting heads and education leadership teams

I’ve got a team of five heads of school: heads of primary school, middle school, senior school, sixth form and of Middle East and South East Asia.

Each runs their own school in their own unique way. I also have a head of administration, who runs the exams, education operations and cover teacher teams. We have team meetings twice a week, as well as one-to-ones, but there is reactive support as well - my Microsoft Teams doesn’t stop pinging.

Very often, people are gobsmacked that a school like ours exists, but in September, we’ll have been around for 20 years. And we’re just like a physical school environment - with assemblies, form groups, clubs and societies, after-school revision clubs, trips and outings.

The difference is that you’re learning from home, but we even have virtual playgrounds and a virtual staffroom.

We do have unique challenges, being online. Technology can let people down; perhaps there’s a storm affecting six teachers and you’ll have to arrange cover at fairly short notice.

Strategic planning

Our main mission is to ensure we have a school for all. We’re constantly looking at how to make our education inclusive. A big part of my strategic planning over the past couple of years has been working on having exams online - for example, we’re in the third year now of offering IGCSEs remotely.

Previously, some students were thriving from learning online, then suddenly they were plucked out and put into a big exam hall to write their exams - for a lot of them, it was a real step out of their comfort zone.

To have their exams online is a massive step forward towards our mission of inclusive education for all. Over 50 per cent of our current Year 11s are registered for online exams this year.

Quality of pupil and family experience

Generally, the reasons why families choose our school fall into four broad groups: international expat families; international pupils who want a British education, but it’s either not available in their area or unaffordable; our “dream chasers” - actors, downhill skiers, tennis players, golfers, designers, ballerinas, soccer players - who come for the flexibility; people in the UK, either families with children not thriving in a bricks-and-mortar school, or who don’t want the strain of the school run and everything that goes with that - they’re working from home and want their child to have that flexibility, too.

We provide support on how to be an online parent. In an online environment, the parent does have to be more involved in their child’s education. We have drop-ins where they can just come and talk about things.

Parents also crave the social aspects - you can’t just stand at the school gate and chat with other parents. We’re constantly working on systems to allow more social interaction.

We have just under 300 teachers. They like it here because you don’t have that travel to work, you very rarely have to deal with behaviour issues, and online you have all this technology at your fingertips and can really engage the pupils in that - although it’s quite intense, as all your lessons are recorded and you know you’re beaming into 20 pupils’ homes.

HR matters

It takes a particular type of character to cope with the knowledge that anyone could be watching your lesson at any point, that if you stumble it’s going to be recorded. Online teaching isn’t for everyone, so we spend a lot of time on recruitment.

We ask applicants to record a video of them doing X, Y, Z, to see their presence on camera - if a candidate is not presenting themselves very well on screen, then they’re not going to present well in a virtual classroom.

We’ve got quite a high level of retention - once they’re with us, people tend to stay.

Performance management is really crucial. It’s very easy to observe lessons - we can watch recordings - but we have peer observations as well. I’ve got very complex data tracking of our observations, so that I’m able to see at a glance any areas we need to develop.

Internal and external meetings

It’s about 80 per cent internal, 20 per cent external. As executive head, the biggest difference from being a head of school is the variety of teams I meet - admissions and marketing, for example, as well as colleagues in equivalent positions to mine in other online schools, or Academy21, our alternative provision school in the UK.

Personal time

I’m a mum of two primary-aged children and focused on what they need. I also love the great outdoors - I became a Munro bagger when studying at the University of Edinburgh to become a computing teacher, and I’ve snowboarded down lots of those lovely Scottish mountains.

I can’t sleep at night without reading. I’ve just finished the latest David Nicholls book, You Are Here. My favourite author is maybe Sally Rooney - we went to the same school in Ireland, many years apart. Reading Normal People felt like walking through my old school.

What would I like to do more or less of?

I love interactions with pupils. After stepping into the executive role, I stopped teaching, which I miss. In an online school, I can’t pop my head around classroom doors or greet parents and pupils at the school gate.

But there are other ways: we had a key stage 3 day in London in March, which gave me an opportunity to interact with students beforehand.

Catriona Olsen was talking to Henry Hepburn

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